EXPERIENTIAL COURSE IN COMMUNITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
For more than fifty years the idea of community has been at the heart of the PA. From the experiment at Kingsley Hall to its current therapeutic households, the PA’s work has always involved a shared attempt to deal with the hardship of emotional distress through the practice of living together.
When the PA was set up, its counter-culture mission was to find an alternative to psychiatric treatment and in hospitals. All these years later the world has changed beyond recognition. Long-stay psychiatric hospitals have mostly been closed down but they haven’t been replaced by a more enlightened and communal approach to suffering, as R. D. Laing and other PA founders hoped they would be. Instead cost-cutting quick fixes and a punishing work ethic are the order of the day. Community as a therapeutic ideal remains as elusive as ever in today’s fragmented, competitive and increasingly digital world. Yet the need for it is more and more urgent.
But it isn’t as easy as saying that community is good and marginalisation is bad. It is possible to feel at home in prison and in prison at home. Bands of outsiders may be much more tolerant, cohesive and healing than clubs or churches. The shared experience of adversity often creates a powerful solidarity, while shared privilege can be divisive and alienating. Thus thinking about community must also involve thinking about how one group impacts, threatens, ignores, deprives another. Community presupposes conflict.
This course serves as both as a stand alone certificate course and an introduction to the PA (including the PA communities)
Held at the PA premises in Hampstead, north London, the course takes place over six weekends spread out over the academic year. You will encounter various modes of group work to explore group dynamics / what goes on between us. Seminars will frame topics to discuss but the heart of the course is experiential, comparative learning about group formats and dynamics – and their relationship to the politics of the wider society. It will be possible to apply to the one year Diploma in Community and Psychotherapy and the Psychotherapy Training from the Experiential Course.
APPLICATION AND FEES
Application is by interview.
The course costs £840 plus a £50 interview fee. There are a limited number of bursaries available for students surviving on low income. Interviews from April 2022, click here too apply.
2021/22 COURSE DATES
2021 weekends: October 16/17 2021, November 27/28
2022 weekends: January 15/16, March 5/6, April 23/24, June 11/12
PROGRAMME
Course Coordinators:
Andrea Heath & Lucy King
Experiential Group Facilitator:
Lakis Georghiou
Consciousness-raising Group Facilitator:
Paul Atkinson
WEEKEND 1
Saturday 16 October 2021
10—10.30 Arrivals
10.30—11 Introduction to the Course
Andrea Heath & Lucy King
11—12.30 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
12—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3 Seminar: The Organisation as a Source of Individual Purpose
Dan Sofer
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 17 October
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course): Community Online: Is It Possible?
Rob White
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course): The History of the PA
Lucy King
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group
WEEKEND 2
Saturday 27 November 2021
10—10.30 Arrivals
10.30—12 Seminar: Judgments and Experience in Psychiatric Services
Laura Neall & Tristan Voice
12—1 Lunch
1—3 Seminar (continued): Judgments and Experience in Psychiatric Services
Laura Neall & Tristan Voice
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 28 November
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course): On Community
Jake Osborne
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group
WEEKEND 3
Saturday 15 January 2022
9.30 — 10.00 Arrivals
10 - 11.00 Large Group Meeting
Lucy King & Andrea Heath
11.15 - 12.45 Gender Groups
Facilitators: Rebecca Greenslade & Andy Metcalf
12.45 —1.30 Lunch
1.30—3 Seminar: Women's Narratives
Christina Moutsou
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 16 January
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course): Psychoanalysis and Movements of Liberation
Ian Parker
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group
WEEKEND 4
Saturday 5 March 2022
10 - 10.45 Large Group
11.00 —12.30 Seminar: Social Class
Paul Gurney
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3 Seminar (continued): Social Class
Paul Gurney
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 6 March
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course):
The Scapegoat
Del Loewenthal
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group
WEEKEND 5
Saturday 23 April
10—11 Large Group
11-12.30 On Racism and Psychoanalysis
Onel Brooks & Harjeet Sorya
12.30 — 1.30 Lunch
1.30 —3 Seminar (continued): On Racism and Psychoanalysis
Onel Brooks & Harjeet Sorya
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 24 April
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Seminar (jointly with Diploma Course): Jean-Luc Nancy's The Inoperative Community: Questioning the Sovereignty of Nations and Selves
Robbie Lockwood
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group
WEEKEND 6
Saturday 11 June
10—11 Large Group
11—12.30 Seminar: Containing, Containers, Boundaries, Borders and Homes
Mandy Carr & Alison Davies
12.30—1 .30 Lunch
1.30—3 Seminar (continued): Containing, Containers, Boundaries, Borders and Homes
Mandy Carr & Alison Davies
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential group
Sunday 12 June
10.30—11 Arrivals
11—12.30 Endings and Course Reflection (jointly with Diploma Course)
Andrea Heath & Lucy King
12.30—1.30 Lunch
1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group (jointly with Diploma Course)
3—3.30 Break
3.30—5 Experiential Group